The importance of the tribunal ruling that established this on Friday cannot be overstated; Uber has around 40,000 drivers in the UK, many of whom—pending an appeal by Uber—should now have access as full-time staff to substantial additional employment rights: things like sick pay, paid leave, and guaranteed minimum wage. What's more, the millions of Brits who work in other areas of the so-called "gig economy," the self-employed builders, delivery drivers, food couriers, and even the hairdressers, might see greater protections and a massively improved quality of life in the wake of the decision.

Uber's argument was typical of tech firms, which believe that the flexibility afforded by their innovations allows them to bypass employment law to cut costs and "disrupt" established business. Uber insisted that it wasn't a transport firm, and that the 25 percent cut it takes from each fare represented the cost of licensing its app and gear to the drivers. In essence, it wants all the benefits of a workforce of tens of thousands of drivers, and as few of the costs as it thinks it can get away with. However, as the tribunal panel remarked, “the notion that Uber in London is a mosaic of 30,000 small businesses linked by a common platform is to our minds faintly ridiculous.”

The ruling is unequivocally good. Self-employment isn't inherently bad, but people working the gig economy in the UK (around one in seven) earn less on average today than they would have done in 1995. And it's only made worse when a sick day costs them money because their employer isn't legally obliged to cover them, or when they can't afford to take time off because they have no holiday allowance. More people than ever make some money on a self-employed basis; if they're earning an average of £60 per week less, as the Resolution Foundation suggests, than they were 20 years ago without even adjusting for inflation, something in the system has clearly gone wrong.

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It's not like Uber can't afford the UK's fairly meagre workers' rights anyway. It's doing so well it recently managed to absorb a $2 billion (£1.65 billion) loss in its failed attempt to break into the Chinese market with barely a blip in its stock prices. It has been valued as high as $66 billion ($54 billion) this year. In the UK last year, the company made a healthy profit. Uber is popular because it provides an excellent service at a (usually) low price. But if that price is achieved by exploiting the low-skilled labour typical of its employees while still turning a profit, it should damn well pay the costs society deems necessary for doing business.

There's a whole school of dangerous libertarian economics which is currently trying to claim this decision is a disaster for the consumer and for the drivers. The Institute for Economic Affairs, which is also agitating to maintain the right of big business to not pay interns for the work they do, described it as a "senseless ruling," and tried to suggest that Uber would in some way be forced to downsize. The Telegraph, meanwhile, wants its readers to believe that Uber drivers were happier under the former regime, and that any rights for workers are an unnecessary cost. These views are of course rubbish.

Uber, if the appeal doesn't go its way, will undoubtedly hike prices for the public through a veil of crocodile tears, trying to paint the small additional costs it will incur from treating its employees like employees as an unconscionable burden and pass them on to the consumer. That'll make them a little less competitive, and bring them more into line with other taxi services in this country, which is fair enough considering they've earned their dominance through unfair means.

With luck, this ruling will spread to other sectors which benefit from casualised workforces. Hermes and Yodel—two delivery firms capitalising on the atomisation of the postal service in this country and the rise in online shopping deliveries—both run on an owner-driver model where self-employed drivers use their own vehicles to deliver parcels. Not only is this a way of dodging employee obligations, in my own experience, it results in a crappy delivery service.

Further Reading

Deliveroo, meanwhile, one of the leading lights in the very crowded takeaway food-delivery sector, has been having labour-relations troubles of its own. Its drivers in London staged a series of strikes organised by the Independent Workers Union of Great Britain after it tried to change the terms of their contracts, moving away from an hourly rate to a payment-per-delivery model. I'm not trying to suggest that companies always treat their full-time employees well, but heavy-handed unilateralism is harder to pull off when workers have better legal protections.

It's not over yet: Uber is of course going to appeal, and because the case was heard at an employment tribunal, there are three levels of appeal left available to it. And while the GMB union's victory seems fairly convincing, there's no telling how the higher courts will respond, and it's unlikely that Uber and its peers will even bother with their new obligations until these appeals are exhausted. Still, it's a good first step to undermining the grip that these rapacious tech disruptors currently have over their casual workers.